ADL Answers Dacey Ad

Norman F. Dacey’s “defamatory advertisement” in the June 6 New York Times “libels American Jewish citizens, goes beyond the bounds of good taste in smearing American government officials–including the

President–with innuendo, and presents half-truths, outright inaccuracies and undocumented hearsay as facts,” the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith charged in a full page advertisement scheduled for publication in the Times tomorrow. The ADL ad, signed by national chairman Seymour Graubard, calls the publicist-broadcaster “an active pro-Arabist” who uses “the kind of anti-Semitism not heard in many years.” The ad by Dacey, a radio commentator and author of the best-selling book “How to Avoid Probate,” was in the form of an open letter to President Nixon from a man “who helped to elect him” in 1968, condemning the President for alleged “blind support” of Israel.

The ADL ad noted that, contrary to charges by Dacey, Israel did not expel Arab residents but offered them “full citizenship,” whereas the Arab governments “denied the Palestinians a vote” on the 1948-49 armistice, and their internment in refugee camps results from Arab “failure” to absorb them. The allegation of “torture” of Arab prisoners is an “Arab propaganda claim never documented,” and the State Department has advised that there is “no basis in fact” to claims of Israeli repression of Americans, the ad said.

According to the ADL, President Nixon “responded to a bipartisan call” for arms to Israel, which is not “blind support” of Israel but a “quite discerning” approach, considering “Soviet expansion in the Middle East.” US aid to Israel has constituted one-half of one percent of foreign aid outlays over the years, and the US “sells” to Israel while it “gives” to the Arabs, the ad said. It asserted that Dacey’s charge of “dual loyalty” by American Jews derives from the “arsenal of old time professional bigots,” and his use of the word “shekel” was “gutter anti-Semitism.”

The ad said that Dacey’s blast at “theatrical hand-wringing over the alleged persecution of Jews in Russia” is “reminiscent of those who talked about ‘the alleged persecution’ of Jews in Nazi Germany.”